Thursday Morning

Haven't posted in a couple of days, and don't have any nice photos to add (sorry!). Have had a great couple of days, with a couple of down things.



First, went to quilt club (class) Tuesday night and had a great time -- learned how to make a table runner with Thangles, which was interesting. I don't know what it is, but I cannot seem to get to class with the fabric I end up wanting to use for the class. So I buy some, and then Diane, as always, had the perfect light fabric to go with it and as always was generous to a fault. And I do mean generous! She'd cleaned out her stash of fabric (I thought I needed to add "of fabric" to those of us old timers who think of a "stash" as something else). She'd told me Sunday she was doing it and that she hoped I wanted some fabric. Well, DUH! Of COURSE I want fabric. I expected a few pieces. The box was HEAVY! I swear, there was a TON of fabric -- lots of it in large yardage pieces, several perfect for backings. I mean it was heaven!



So when I got home last night I pulled ALL my fabric, every piece (except scraps -- that's a whole different story that needs some serious work) and sorted into colors and pulled the FQs out and sorted them in a color wave. Then I got the ruler out and started folding. Meghan called in the middle, and I put her on speaker phone and kept folding. I got through all the FQs and all the whites/creams. Which only leaves all the other colors to fold! My dining room table, which is NOT small, is covered in fabric! WHOO HOOO. Soon it will all be folded and divided the way I always wanted it to be. I'm looking forward to getting back to that tonight.



I can't thank Diane enough for her friendship, her teaching, her encouragement and her gift of fabric -- which got me motivated to at least start getting organized. The scraps will have to wait until the first of the year, but I do plan to use Bonnie Hunter's system with that. It'll take a while to get there, but I will!



I didn't get any more of the OBW blocks squared up, but the steam and starch have helped to get them to the right 6-1/2" size. Nan and I will quilt it once I get the top done. Sometime in early November I hope.



Meghan is scheduled to be induced tomorrow at 11:00 California time. The hospital will take and have a photo of the baby up within an hour. Now, I looked at some of those photos of other babies yesterday -- uhhhhh, let's just say maybe they ought to wait a bit? I'm sure Talya will be beautiful, but I probably won't be sharing that picture unless hers is very different from the rest! I'll wait until she's a little less, uh, new. Yeah, new. That's the word I want. New!



So before I could start folding fabric last night, I had to make a run to Saturn (which had closed early due to lack of business AND the Rays World Series game so a wasted trip). It seems that although my credit is fine, the car dealerships are having a really hard time getting the banks to write ANY loans -- I just spoke to the finance guy, they haven't had anybody in the showroom for 2 days, not one person, and 2 bank people came in yesterday and told them not to bother to send any applications to them -- they aren't writing car loans right now. Mine has been accepted by another credit union, but I have to go sign papers again tonight, and it went up another $3 a month because the interest rate went up 1/2 of one percent. PAIN!! I am tempted to pull out of the deal, but still I'm way under the interest rate I was paying on my old car and I have come to really like this car. So I'm going ahead with it, although it might not be the smartest thing I've ever done.

Also, my trip to San Diego is a bit less stressful than it was going to be. I was going to have my husband, Greg, take care of Trixye, but Greg has never owned a pet, much less a dog. He gave her a chocolate chip cookie about a month ago, thinking he was being nice to her -- because he simply doesn't know any better. Luckily for me, Trixye didn't like it and didn't eat it. I was concerned about leaving her with him. I had also checked into the limo to the airport -- what used to be $15 or $20 is now $40!!! One way. Parking in long term parking is $9 a day, so that made more sense to me, but I was uncomfortable with having my new car in the lot for a week. However, my good friend Carol has offered to (1) take care of Trixye for me -- and Trixye has been there and gets along just fine with her two dogs and (2) take me to the airport and pick me up!!! Now how's that for a great friend!? I'll go to her house on Sunday before I leave, spend the night there (which gives Trixye a chance to get acclimated before I leave) and then Carol will drop me off at the airport on her way to work. I may have to hang around the airport a bit longer than I would like, but a good book and some hand sewing should take care of that. Then she'll pick me up Saturday when I get in and my car will be nice and safe and sound at her house. What a relief!


I'm off work tomorrow -- have to take Mom for a biopsy, and then my car to an inspection place for the insurance company -- Pinellas County, where I live, requires it. I guess it's to be sure you don't buy a clunker and then put in a claim for insurance for body repair that it already had. If I had the sticker I wouldn't have to do this, but since my car had a little over 500 miles on it, the sticker was gone, so . . . . hopefully Mom's biopsy won't take long and I can get to that appointment by 4:00. Otherwise, my Aunt Pat will have to come pick her up from the hospital. We all think this is much ado about nothing, since she's had these lumps in her neck for years, but nonetheless I'm glad to be able to help her get them checked out.


Work is, obviously, SLOWWWWWW. It's a touch scary, but I have been assured, reassured, and promised that our firm gets through tough times, never does lay offs and is financially sound and secure. That I would be one of the last to go even if they did, because I can do litigation as well as real estate, plus any other area of law. Still, it's disconcerting to sit here day after day with little or nothing to do. I suspect they'll start pulling some of the real estate lawyers into land use and bankruptcy and work outs -- that's what happened years ago during the last recession in the firm I worked in -- the practice areas just changed. Bad times are still good for lawyers, just not necessarily in the areas they are used to working in.


I hope everyone has a wonderful day. Hopefully I will be able to report the birth of my beautiful granddaughter tomorrow!



Billye